Depolarizing Campaign 2016
The presidential campaign in the US continues to highlight what is at stake in this election. On the right hand there is Donald Trump playing the part of the blustering strong man who will say anything, no matter how outrageous, for the cheers and applause. He goes out of his way to appeal to the lowest common denominators of fear and anger. It is actually people like Trump who have brought this country to this point of moral and ethical bankruptcy, and who have created this shell game of an economic system with it's periodic bubbles (one is about to burst any day now in fact) that lead to increased concentration of wealth among a few while more and more people are impoverished.
I think Cruz and Kasich are the only other republicans left standing, both hideous christofascists who espouse the most medieval policies to punish the poor for being poor while making it impossible for anyone to get out of poverty. Lovely. Also on the right is Hillary Clinton. She's running as a democrat, because the democratic party has embraced a right of center position for many years now. A Clinton presidency would be as repressive and violent as if any of the republican candidates won. If Clinton becomes president you can count on more war, more privatization of natural resources like water, more "Free Trade" deals which actually create more poverty and are environmentally unsound. You can expect more fossil fuel subsidies, since Clinton herself is an investor in fossil fuels. The surveillance state will grow, education will continue to be expensive and the quality will continue to diminish. Basically, Hillary Clinton is a republican.
Then on the left there are two candidates, Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein. Bernie is running as a democrat though he has been an independent for most of his political career. His proposals all stand in stark contrast to those of the rightist candidates. He wants less war, better education made available financially, proper taxation of the wealthy, an end to the toxic "Free Trade" treaties that the Clintons started us on in the 1990's, renewable energy, jobs programs to employee youth and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and more.
Jill Stein as even more progressive than Bernie. She would end the US taxpayer's subsidizing of the Israeli occupation, and make deeper cuts into military spending than any of the other candidates.
This whole "right vs left" paradigm is absurd. It's a way of simplifying things for people, but it does not serve real critical thinking at all.
Rather than think in terms of right and left, how about just looking at each candidate's stated policy proposals and deciding which ones actually would be good for the people? If you do that there is no question that either Sanders or Stein would be the best choices. Both place the physical environment high on their priority list. That's good because...hah...no clean air, no clean water, no humans! They also both recognize the need to de-corporatize the government. The folks on the right want to increase the role that corporations have in running the country. We have already seen what happens when the profit motive outweighs valuing life, and it's horrific.
Discard your labels; republican, democrat, independent, right, left, center, progressive, liberal, conservative; and just think about what would actually be most healthy.
I think Cruz and Kasich are the only other republicans left standing, both hideous christofascists who espouse the most medieval policies to punish the poor for being poor while making it impossible for anyone to get out of poverty. Lovely. Also on the right is Hillary Clinton. She's running as a democrat, because the democratic party has embraced a right of center position for many years now. A Clinton presidency would be as repressive and violent as if any of the republican candidates won. If Clinton becomes president you can count on more war, more privatization of natural resources like water, more "Free Trade" deals which actually create more poverty and are environmentally unsound. You can expect more fossil fuel subsidies, since Clinton herself is an investor in fossil fuels. The surveillance state will grow, education will continue to be expensive and the quality will continue to diminish. Basically, Hillary Clinton is a republican.
Then on the left there are two candidates, Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein. Bernie is running as a democrat though he has been an independent for most of his political career. His proposals all stand in stark contrast to those of the rightist candidates. He wants less war, better education made available financially, proper taxation of the wealthy, an end to the toxic "Free Trade" treaties that the Clintons started us on in the 1990's, renewable energy, jobs programs to employee youth and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and more.
Jill Stein as even more progressive than Bernie. She would end the US taxpayer's subsidizing of the Israeli occupation, and make deeper cuts into military spending than any of the other candidates.
This whole "right vs left" paradigm is absurd. It's a way of simplifying things for people, but it does not serve real critical thinking at all.
Rather than think in terms of right and left, how about just looking at each candidate's stated policy proposals and deciding which ones actually would be good for the people? If you do that there is no question that either Sanders or Stein would be the best choices. Both place the physical environment high on their priority list. That's good because...hah...no clean air, no clean water, no humans! They also both recognize the need to de-corporatize the government. The folks on the right want to increase the role that corporations have in running the country. We have already seen what happens when the profit motive outweighs valuing life, and it's horrific.
Discard your labels; republican, democrat, independent, right, left, center, progressive, liberal, conservative; and just think about what would actually be most healthy.
No comments:
Post a Comment